brioux.tv: the podcast

Lauren Holly is an American-Canadian actress who lives in Toronto but works in Vancouver. Hers is every TV actresses resume rolled into one.
Vancouver is where she shoots Family Law, which returns for a second season Monday, May 22 on Global. The CW just announced that they've acquired the cheeky law drama for their summer season.
When she's not stirring things up as family matriarch Joanne Kowalski opposite Jewel Staite and Victor Garber on Family Law, she can be found in Ontario's cottage country. That's where she shoots The Lake, the Prime Video drama returning for a second season June 9.
Holly's credits stretch back to her breakout role opposite Tom Skerritt and Kathy Baker on Picket Fences (1992-96). Several seasons on Chicago Hope and NCIS followed as did features such as "Dumb and Dumber" and "What Women Want."
Raised in upstate New York, Holly married not one but two Canadians, moved to Canada, became a Canadian citizen and has three Canadian sons. Does this not qualify her for the Order of Canada? Or at least a discount at Tim Horton's?
Hear her on the importance of acting on happy sets on this episode of brioux.tv: the podcast.

Hugh Wilson talked his way into a job at MTM Enterprises at just the right time. When he arrived in the early '70s, they were busy making sitcom history with The Mary Tyler Moore Show and The Bob Newhart Show. Wilson, who had no prior TV experience, could often be found up in the rafters, taking a crash course in Funny 101.
The result was his first series as a creator and executive producer, WKRP in Cincinnati (1978-82).
In this "From the Vault" conversation from 2014, Wilson -- who passed away in 2018 at 74 -- talks about what it was like to strike gold with just the right cast at just the right time -- even if his rock 'n' roll radio station sitcom was never a big hit in the States.
Among the surprising things he reveals:
"When the show first went on, it was struggling in the ratings in the U.S. But the ratings in Canada were great right from the beginning," says Wilson, who used the Canadian response to successfully argue that the series needed time to find its audience. "I've never understood that but I've always been super grateful for it."

Another podcast episode about the 1972 hockey Summit Series?
Yes and here's why: a second documentary looks at the landmark eight-game series from a very different angle.
"Ice-Breaker: the '72 Summit Series" premieres Tuesday, December 27 on Super Channel Fuse. The film, by director Robbie Hart and executive producer Peter Raymont, takes viewer deep inside the Iron Curtain of Soviet Russia.
Here's what Hart discovered two years ago after hatching the idea for the project. During those Cold War years, Gary J. Smith worked at the Canadian embassy in Moscow and had a hand in bringing East and West together for a "friendly series" between hockey's two superpowers. Hart discovered Smith was writing a book about the series (out now as "Ice War Diplomat: Hockey Meets Cold War Politics at the 1972 Summit Series").
The book became the spine of the documentary, which differs in many ways from last September's four-part CBC series.
First, Wayne Gretzky talks exclusively here about what this series meant to him as a hockey-mad 12-year-old in 1972. Second, Hart, accompanied by goalie Vladislav Tretiak, travels back to the Moscow Ice Palace where half the games were played. It hasn't changed in 50 years! Third, the CBC doc's exclusive use of restored footage from the series forced Hart and others to scour for other sources. What they found were some stunning, ice-level shots, from Russian cameras, of Phil Esposito and others in action that have never been seen before.
Fourth: the new doc makes great use of the inspired sketches made on the scene by Montreal Gazette editorial cartoonist Terry "Aislin" Mosher.
If, like me, you are old enough to remember watching the Summit series on TV, you'll see it from a whole new angle. If you were born years later, don't miss this chance to catch up on a mind-blowing part of Canadian history.

Giddyap, pardner. This week's episode of brioux.tv: the podcast takes a deep dive into everything you need to know about collecting your favourite TV shows on DVD. My guest is archivist, curator and classic TV expert Andrew J. Klyde, executive producer of Bonanza: The Official Complete Series.
For many boomers, Sunday nights were spent with your family crowded around the one set in the house watching Disney, Ed Sullivan at 8 and then at 9, Bonanza. Throughout its 14-season, 431-episode run, Bonanza was the most-popular TV series of the 1960s.
Besides making sure every episode was restored and transferred from 35 mm camera negatives, Klyde packed extras and bonus materials into the Bonanza Complete Series DVDs. The result is a Master Class on the history of 20th century television.
For example: In digging through the background of Ottawa-born actor Lorne Greene, not the first choice to play ranch patriarch Ben Cartwright, Klyde sourced and added rarely seen profiles and documentaries from the CBC and other Canadian sources.
He even added an interview I did back in 1991 with Michael Landon, who played Little Joe on the series and went on to Little House on the Prairie and Highway to Heaven. Sadly, Landon died of cancer three months after we spoke.
I'm proud to play a small role in such a handsome salute to this series. Listen as Klyde takes us back to the Ponderosa with dozens of behind-the-scenes stories. Then if you have a classic TV fan on your Christmas list, take note: Bonanza: The Official Complete Series DVD set is on sale now at Amazon.

It was 20 years ago this week when the biggest story of Kevin Newman's career broke wide open.
The Toronto-native was coming off a five year stint with ABC News in New York City and had just moved back to Canada's west coast to help launch Global National.
"It was 5:30 a.m. in Vancouver," he recalls, "when I got a phone call that something was coming up — a plane, they weren’t sure how big, had hit the World Trade Center and I should probably come in. So, I jumped in the shower, and then while I was in the shower, my wife yelled out that another plane has hit. And like everybody, it was when that second one hit you went, “Oh, that's no accident.”
Newman raced through traffic, got to Global's news studio, and took his place behind the anchor desk. For the next 16 hours straight he kept Canadians appraised of the horrors happening in the American city he once called home.
Kevin Newman has anchored newscasts on all three major Canadian broadcast networks as well as with ABC in New York. He helped launch Global National 20 years ago, premiering the Vancouver-based newscast just days before the attacks on the World Trade Center and elsewhere in America on 9/11.
He's now the executive producer of a new documentary airing Sept. 10 entitled, "Disruption: 20 Years of Global National." It airs on the main network as well as on-demand with Stack TV and on the Global TV app.
Listen in for much more about his Gemini award-winning career, including his early days on CBC’s Midday. Plus find out what fellow Canadian-born anchor Peter Jennings gave him when he left New York to return to Canada.